


More Than A Bottle

by Elevensins



Series: The Things Captain America Puts Up With [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elevensins/pseuds/Elevensins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Banner's thinking out loud again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than A Bottle

"There’s more to him than just the bottle."

Tony glanced up from his terminal and blinked. Banner had his back to him, studying a monitor intently. So intently that for a moment, Tony wondered if he’d just heard him thinking out loud. 

"Come again?" 

Banner turned around then, arms folding over his chest. ”Just… something I've been thinking about for a while. There’s more to Captain Rogers than the serum.”

Tony’s eyes flicked left and then right and then back to Banner. ”Ok? What does this have to do with the work we’re doing now, Bruce?”

"Well, since our ah… little argument on the helicarrier, I've been doing a little research into my past attempts at recreating the serum." 

Tony still felt confused, wondering how their current research, which had not a thing to do with any super soldier mumbo jumbo, lead to this line of thinking. But, Banner was looking thoughtful, meandering toward the window to glance out at the world. So he ventured a guess. ”Something’s bothering you about it?”

"Yeah, you could say that," Banner replied. "Thing is, a lot of people have tried to follow Erskine’s formulas, what little research they could get their hands on. Most of it was in his head. We had old blood samples from Captain Rogers. And a lot of notes, some of it hardly made sense. His mind was just that advanced."

Tony wrinkled his nose, trying to avoid the Pavlovian urge to scowl when he thought of his father at all. ”My dad chased after that pipe dream for years before he died. Erskine took his secret to the grave. Probably for the best.”

"No," Banner said, looking up at Tony again pointedly. "He didn't. We've created that formula over a dozen times. We just didn't know it. When it failed to have the intended effect, we thought it was the wrong thing. Or we didn't get the chemical make up just right. But don’t you get it, Tony?"

"No," Tony replied, already getting irritated with the topic. The last thing he wanted was to think about Captain Freaking America, it had been a household conversation for years. Living in the shadow of a man who had supposedly died before he was even born. "And I’d kinda like to get back to this thing here in front of me so, the point?"

Bruce stared at him for a moment, lips pulled into a very slight half-smile. He grunted and shook his head. ”Right. Of course. I’ll spell it out for you then. The reason that serum worked on Steve, and hasn't worked on anyone since then, is he’s the variable we can’t control for. We have to find someone just like him. Otherwise… we get anomalies. Like, well, me.”

Tony smirked. “Yeah, good luck finding a guy like him in this day and age.” 

Bruce sighed, “No, it’s impossible now, we’d have to get a sample of his DNA from before the change. There are none left from the 1940s, no one thought about it back then. But that’s not my point. My point is, the serum worked on Rogers because he was the right match for it. Meaning there’s more to him than just what came out of a lab.”

Tony pressed his palms to the top of the terminal and glared at Banner for a quiet moment. ”Et tu, Brute?”

Banner shrugged his shoulders, chuckling softly. ”What can I say? The guy grows on you. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you staring at his backside, either.”

Despite the danger involved in potentially angering The Hulk, Tony grabbed the nearest reachable object and hurled it at Bruce’s head.


End file.
